Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with VoIP are IP telephony, Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB), broadband telephony, and broadband phone, among others. The basic steps involved in originating a VoIP telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet; the process is reversed at the receiving end.
VoIP systems employ session control protocols to control the set-up and tear-down of calls as well as audio codecs which encode speech allowing transmission over an IP network as digital audio via an audio stream. Codec use is varied between different implementations of VoIP (and often a range of codecs are used); some implementations rely on narrowband and compressed speech, while others support high fidelity stereo codecs.
While VoIP communication is now becoming widespread, some customers are understandably concerned that VoIP data networks are not as reliable as the traditional PSTN, which is exceptionally reliable. Particularly with many business customers, the voice telephone network is a mission critical function of the company, such that when a company's voice network fails (even temporarily), the company's business is also effectively shut down during the period of failure.
Many potential customers would like to take advantage of the inherent benefits of VoIP technology; however, they may have past experience of frequent down time with their own internal computer networks that may make them hesitant to commit their voice communications to a computer network-based communications platform. There therefore exists a need for systems and methods that improve the robustness of VoIP communications. The present disclosure is directed toward systems and methods which meet this and other needs.